The Self Coaching Model, created by Brooke Castillo, is a tool you can use to manage your emotions and awareness, gain new insights, solve problems, and move through what keeps you stuck. The acronym for the model is CTFAR.

Circumstances 

Circumstances are facts that everyone agrees on and that can be proven in a court of law.

Thoughts

Thoughts are sentences in your head. 

Feelings

Single-word label for the emotion in your body. Example: anxious, sad, frustrated, ashamed, confident, etc. 

Actions

Actions are what you do, don’t do, or react to (e.g., actions, inactions, and reactions). In the Self Coaching Model, your feelings cause your actions, inactions, or reactions.

Result

Results are the consequences or outcomes of your actions, inactions, or reactions.

Important Notes:

Thoughts are merely sentences that pop up in your head. Human beings have approximately 60,000 thoughts per day and most of our thoughts go unsupervised. Typically we don’t intentionally choose our thoughts and that’s often the cause of many of our problems. Distinguishing between thoughts and feelings is critical to feeling better.

The problem with most coaching is that it focuses solely on changing your actions. When you change your actions but don’t change the thoughts and feelings behind those actions, there’s resistance, and that makes it difficult, if not impossible, to see real change. - Brooke Castillo

The Self-Coaching Model treats the root cause of what you are trying to change to handle it rather than managing it. 

Using the Self Coaching Model:

The basic premise of the Model is as follows:

• Circumstances are neutral.
• Your thoughts cause your feelings.
• Your feelings cause your actions.
• Your actions cause your results.

The components of the Model are as follows:

• A circumstance is a neutral fact.
• A thought is a sentence in your head about a circumstance.
• A feeling is a vibration in your body caused by a thought.
• An action is what your feelings cause you to do.
• The result is the consequence of your action.

Ladder Thoughts

Ladder thoughts are what will take you from your current thought to your goal thought. For more information on how to do this, please refer to the Mindset Lesson.